A strong breeze tugged at the tentflaps and made them flail, the two guards standing beside the entrance tried to huddle deeper into their coats. Inside a single brazier gave little illumination and not close to enough warmth for the three men occupying it.

One, a large bald man with broad shoulders was pacing slowly through the room. A second, younger man, wiry and thin was sitting on a stool perching over a piece of pergament, while the third man, a grizzled old veteran, stood silently to attention.

"This will be a glorious chapter, mein Herr! The Holy Crusade, I can't wait until you enter the city of Damascus gloriously. I have already prepared several versions of it in advance. It will be my masterpiece. Do you want to hear this third version of mine, I like it best so far..."

"Hush you fool!" The old veteran spoke, but the pacing man held up a hand. "Leave him be, Rainer. Let him write his stories."

"As you wish, my Duke!" replied the veteran stiffly.

Leopold was pacing through his tent, mainly to help him think, but also to get some movement in his stiff joints. He could feel himself becoming older. Who could have foreseen that the nights in this country could be so cold. By day the sun nearly melted your brain and by night it was hard not to shiver.
Finally he turned on the scribe, who jolted upright at the sudden attention.

"I wouldn't be so sure about me entering Damascus. If you write in advance, maybe you should prepare for some different endings as well. You have heard the news. The Mongols are besieging Damascus and have brought a force that far outnumbers us."

"I am sure you will be able to defeat them, my Lord! You always do. Nobody stands a chance against our armies. The Austrian Household Army has never lost."

Leopold gave a snort of contempt and began pacing again. The man was right though. He had never lost a battle, now had he? But then his enemies had been Rebels, Hungarians, Venetians, and he had been head of the Austrian Household Army. Now he was commanding a band of Crusaders. Men that followed him, because they believed in some pious mission. He knew what he would have done with the Austrian Army at his back. Wait for the Mongols to deplete their forces against the Egyptian defenders and then move in for the kill. Maybe deplete their ranks through nightly raids.
But this was different. The men would not sit idly by, while some barbarians took their prized objective. They had come to conquer Damascus, and conquer it they would. No backing down, no strategical maneuvering. You went towards the enemy and fought it out, square and fair.

He couldn't believe his own thoughts! Now he sounded just like Sigismund. Maybe this Crusade had changed him though. There must be a reason why his brother Henry was now hailed as Henry the Chivalrous, although he had never shown much inclination before he left. Maybe as a Crusader you had to do things differently. You presented Christendom after all. And while you may well be a sneaky bastard you couldn't act like one, that just wouldn't sit well with the Pope, or Emperor Henry and the Diet for that matter.

And for his enemies, these were no minor European powers. This were savage barbarians from the Steppe to the East. Horse Lords, they were called. Many a foe had fallen against them and it was murmured that they're Empire stretched expanses that no European mind could imagine. The had sent their best generals to conquer all of Christendom before them, and they would not be stopped easily.

Once again Leopold stopped in his steps. He knew what he had to do. He had known it all along. He was not getting any younger, and he had always wanted die in battle. He had known that the Mongols would await him and now he had his chance before him. To prove whether those Raiders from the East really were such formidable foes as everybody made them out to be. And also to find out whether he had really earned his reputation of being the greatest general of the Reich, he added wryly.

"Rainer, my trusted friend. We have been through a lot together and it looks like soon our fates will be decided. I have one final thing I ask from you." The old veteran only nodded.

"If I die, take my sword and bring it to my son Arnold."

"Die? What do you mean die?" exclaimed the Biographer from his stool in the corner.

"Hush you fool!" Leopold turns back to Rainer "Tell him, tell him to remember his father. And now go get me Karl Zirn. I have to talk with him and then I will have to speak to the Crusader Council."

"Jawohl mein Herr!" Rainer bows and leaves the tent immediately. With a thin smile on his lips Leopold turns to the scrawny man sitting in the corner.

"Well, go ahead already. Write your stories, write a lot of them. If I should die, I want nothing less than the best version you got, understand?"